Postgraduate Course: Conditionals MSc (PHIL11149)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course is a general introduction to the meaning and logic of conditionals.
Shared with undergraduate course Conditionals PHIL10154
For courses co-taught with undergraduate students and with no remaining undergraduate spaces left, a maximum of 8 MSc students can join the course. Priority will be given to MSc students who wish to take the course for credit on a first come first served basis after matriculation. |
| Course description |
The aim is provide a thorough understanding of the complexities involved in explicating the meaning and logic of various types of conditional constructions.
Syllabus:
Class 1: Conditionals and Logic: Material Implication and Strict Implication
Class 2: Variably Strict Conditionals (Lewis, Stalnaker)
Class 3: The No-Truth-Value View (Edgington, Gibbard)
Class 4: The Restrictor View (Lewis, Kratzer)
Class 5: Conditionals as Definite Descriptions (Schlenker)
Class 6: Dynamic Strict Implication (von Fintel, Gillies)
Class 7: Anankastic Conditionals (Sæbø, von Fintel and Iatridou)
Class 8: Biscuit Conditionals (DeRose and Grandy)
Class 9: Conditional Conjunctions and Disjunctions
Class 10: Conditionals and Modals (Kolodny and MacFarlane)
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- develop core skills in philosophy, including interpreting and critically engaging with philosophical texts, evaluating arguments and theories, and developing one's own ideas in response to the issues discussed.
- have a thorough understanding of standard analyses of conditionals and an ability to identify and distinguish different types of conditional constructions and explicate their differences.
- have the capability to engage with philosophical analyses using conditionals.
- be sufficient in writing a precise and critical essay on state of the art research on conditionals and in presenting the contents of a research article.
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Reading List
Textbook:
Bennett, Jonathan 2003. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals. Oxford University Press.
Research Articles:
Edgington, Dorothy 1991. 'Do conditionals have truth-conditions?' In Conditionals, Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 176-201.
Gibbard., Allan 1981. 'Two recent theories of conditionals'. In Harper, W. L., Stalnaker, R. and Pearce, G. (eds.) Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time. Dordrecht: Dordrecht: Reidel.
von Fintel, Kai and Iatridou, Sabine, 2005. 'What to do if you want to get to Harlem: Anankastic Conditionals and Related Matters' (Rutgers Semantic Workshop, unpublished ms.)
Gillies, Thony 2007. 'Counterfactual Scorekeeping'. Linguistics and Philosophy, 30, 3: 329-360. 2012. Indicative Conditionals. Routledge.
Glanzberg, Michael 2006. 'Quantifiers'. In Lepore, Ernest and Smith, Barry C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, chap. 31. Oxford: Oxford, University Press, pp. 794-822.
Heim, Irene and Kratzer, Angelika 1998. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell Publishing.
Kolodny and MacFarlane, 2010. 'Ifs and Oughts', Journal of Philosophy, 107 (3) 115-143.
Kratzer, 1991. 'Conditionals' in Semantik: ein internationale Handbuch der zeitgenössichen Forschung, ed. Arnim von Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich. Walter de Gruyter.
Lewis, David 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Moss, Sarah 2012. 'On the pragmatics of counterfactuals'. Nous, 46, 3: 561'586.
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1968. 'A Theory of Conditionals'. In Rescher, Nicholas (ed.) Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Additional Information
| Course URL |
Please see Learn |
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Writing skills, interpreting texts, evaluating arguments and theories |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
The course will be taught by Dr Anders Schoubye. |
| Keywords | Philosophy of Language,Logic,Indicative and Subjunctive Conditionals |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Anders Schoubye
Tel:
Email: aschouby@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Lynsey Buchanan
Tel: (0131 6)51 5002
Email: Lynsey.Buchanan@ed.ac.uk |
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